Decluttering the Hamsters in My Brain: How to Calm the Overwhelmed Mind

Calming the Overwhelmed Mind | Agnes Wainman | London Psychological Services

I recently a took a week away from my counselling practice in London, Ontario to have some down time, spend time with my family and re-energize.  I didn’t have a ton of plans other than a few days away. Minimal plans, low stress; my kind of holiday.

During my first day off, I stumbled across the new trend in decluttering, the KonMari method. I immediately downloaded the book to my Kindle and fell in love. The basic principle of this method is to only keep the things that “spark joy”, and discarding all of the rest. Once you are left with only the things that you truly love, everything gets its own spot, which allows you to maintain a tidy space.

According to the method, you begin with categories of items rather than locations. The first category was clothes. I pulled out all of the clothing that I owned and ruthlessly started to purge. I only kept the items that truly sparked joy and got rid of 2 huge garbage bags of clothing that only sparked mediocrity.

I loved this process. When I look into my closet, it makes me happy. Everything has a spot, everything is neatly hung up or folded and I have actually been able to maintain the tidiness.

As I decluttered my physical home, I also realized that I needed to do some mental decluttering. My brain can be an overwhelming place. There is a lot going on in there at any given moment; I may be thinking of my clinical work, blog posts that I want to write, the books that I want to read, the plans that I have for the next week, what I’m going to pack my kids for lunch, what I want life to look like 5 years from now.

Essentially my brain is rows and rows of hamsters.

Hamsters on treadmills.

All going at various speeds.

Occasionally a few of the hamsters crank up their treadmills way too fast and all of a sudden they start flying off their treadmills. My brain becomes a hamster explosion.

This is overwhelming.

I realized that I was dealing with a hamster infestation in my brain. I needed to declutter ASAP.

I first needed to identify all of the hamsters. Seriously, there are probably hundreds of them. There were work related ones, family related ones, money related ones, body image related ones, self-worth related ones.

Hamster infestation.

I soon realized that there was no way to identify every single hamster. There were just too many. However, I could start to prioritize which hamsters should be running their little tails off and which needed to chill for the moment, or be escorted off the premises.

I started doing a categorization of my hamsters. There were ones that absolutely needed to keep running. There were things that do need attention now.

However, there were hamsters that were going full force that could be slowed down. Yes, I needed to write a new blog post but I didn’t need to be thinking of it constantly. I plugged in the treadmill for that hamster now, when I actually sat down to write this post.

There were also hamsters that needed to be escorted out of my brain for good. So often we think about other people and how we can change them or their behaviour. These hamsters needed to go.

There was the “you’re not good enough, you totally suck!” hamsters. They also needed to be escorted out. I have no doubt that they will eventually set up their treadmills at some point again, and will need to be yet again shown the door.

There were also a few hamsters that needed to be put on their treadmills. They wanted to stay on the couch, eating Doritos and binge watching Gossip Girl on Netflix. My self-care hamsters were being lazy. They are the ones who say “you don’t have time to take of yourself! You don’t need self-care.”

These are some of the trickiest hamsters to deal with. While I pride myself on encouraging others of the importance of self-care, it can be hard for me to do so as well. I need to plunk those hamsters on their treadmills and crank up the speed. It is important.

Right now my brain feels calmer. Some hamsters are gone. Some hamsters are jogging at a nice light jog. Others are benched for the time being.

However, I have no doubt that I will have to declutter again. While I have high hopes that my closets will remain a calm and serene space filled with items that spark joy, my mind is bound to get cluttered again. The evicted hamsters will try to get back in. The lazy hamsters will make their way back to the couch. Future focused hamsters will start sprinting.

I will need to declutter.

How are the hamsters in your brain?

Let's Stop Being Awkward about Infertility and Miscarriage

Infertility Miscarriage | Agnes Wainman | London Psychological Services

Dear society,

We have some work to do. There are so many things we need to work on, but today I want to work on how we deal with infertility and pregnancy loss. 

Because for the most part, we suck.  We suck in how we treat ourselves and others when it comes to these really sucky, heart breaking, monumental situations.

When it comes to infertility and pregnancy loss, we become inept, socially awkward, hot messes. Or we just keep it all to ourselves, and shame and guilt ourselves for something that is completely out of our control. Or we just avoid the topic all together.

This needs to change.

So let’s start with the basics.

Infertility and Miscarriage is Common

For many women, infertility and pregnancy loss is a part of our reality. Statistics indicate that 1 in 6 couples experience difficulties conceiving and approximately 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage. These are not infrequent events. Add in the additional traumas of later term pregnancy losses, terminating due to medical conditions and stillbirths, there are a lot of women who have had fertility related complications.

This is a lot of women.

You likely know a woman who has experienced a fertility related complication or you are a woman who has experienced one.

This is not some super rare, 1 in a bajillion chance, condition. This is happening to a lot of us.

Despite the regularity of these situations, we are super uncomfortable talking about them. We are super uncomfortable talking about them if they are happening to us and we are super uncomfortable talking to people who are going through them.

What gives?

It's Uncomfortable to Talk about Fertility

For many of us, fertility is considered a pretty private thing. I get that. You’re probably not going around announcing that you’ll be bedding your honey on Tuesday, because that’s when you’re ovulating. Good boundaries! I appreciate being spared the visual.

However, when our fertility journey hits a bump, a lot of that privacy feels stripped away.  All of a sudden we may find ourselves talking to a team of medical professionals about our sex life. People are checking out our uteruses, fallopian tubes, and all other previously private parts. A highly emotionally charged part of your life is being boiled down to scary statistics and complicated sounding medical terms.

We feel exposed and vulnerable.

It’s so hard. It’s even harder to talk about how exposed and vulnerable we feel, especially when we feel that we are totally alone in this (which as we clarified above, not accurate, since it’s happening to a lot of us.)

It’s also so hard to keep talking about it when we get less than ideal responses, like;

“Just relax, it will happen!”

“You can always try again.”

*crickets*

One of the hardest parts of going through my own fertility treatments was sitting in the waiting room with so many other women who were going through similar experiences. There was so much potential for support and empathy, yet we were all too busy trying not to make eye contact.

Maybe we need a better system in those waiting rooms; wear a green pin for “yes, please talk to me, I need to desperately!” and red for “not today, will just be staring at my shoes.” (side note: if you go with the staring at your shoes option, make sure to wear your most awesome amazing shoes. You gotta find joy where you can.)

If you are a woman currently in the midst of this fertility crap, please know that you’re not alone in this. You likely have some unrealistic expectations of yourself and how you “should” be coping. These experiences can trigger all sorts of responses and you need to allow yourself to feel them. You need to talk about your experience. Not sure who to talk to? You can definitely talk to me. Many women report feeling a bit better after just a few sessions (the first session will likely involve some, er, many tears and that’s okay. I’ve got tissues and I’m cool with crying).

If you know someone that is experiencing fertility complications and you don’t know what to say, that’s okay, you don’t have to have the perfect thing to say. Ask her how she is feeling. Give her space to talk about what she needs to talk about. Bring her ice cream. Don’t try to make it better (seriously, retire any well-meaning platitudes today!). Acknowledge what she is going through. Do not ignore or avoid the topic. I know you don’t want to upset her, but she’s already upset, and ignoring just makes it worse.

So society, can we pledge to do better? Can we pledge that we will stop being so weird and awkward. Can we just say “I’m sorry this is happening, it sucks.”

Reflections of a Mud Woman: What is Self-Care?

Self-care | Agnes Wainman | London Psychological Services

“So, does this count as self-care?”

I posed this question to two friends this weekend; we were completely covered in mud, we were about halfway through a 9 km, 13 obstacle challenge and it was about a bazillion degrees out (it seemed like a good idea when I signed up for it back in January.)

Apparently it did count. My (clearly more chipper and positive) friend outlined the reasons it totally counted; we were doing something that was physically healthy, we were spending time together and doing something that was solely for us. 

Once I completed the course, got the mud out of places that mud should never be, I reflected more about this experience and how I couldn’t help but agree that it totally did count as self-care. 

Sometimes it can be tricky to determine what self-care actually is. Sure we hear about it all the time. We know (in theory) that it’s important.  We know that we should be doing it and we also know that we aren’t doing enough of it.

So what exactly is self-care?

•    Self-care can be *anything* that has a positive impact on you, both in the short-term and long-term (we’ll get back to things that seem like self-care but actually aren’t). I call it finding your moments of bliss; those moments when you can connect to and say “ahh, this feels pretty good right now.”

•    Self-care is not things that feel good in the moment, but that come with an emotional hangover. You may have experienced this when that second piece of cake totally felt like self-care in the moment (“it was so tasty!”) but within a few minutes you are beating yourself up for having too much sugar, your stomach hurts and now you feel even worse. That’s not to say that good food can’t be a part of self-care (in my world, brie is totally self-care), but also be aware of any negative impacts it may have on you afterwards.

•    Self-care can be activities that we do for our physical body; going on walks, taking an exercise class, working out at the gym. Exercise can be a huge mood booster, but it needs to be something that you actually enjoy. Dragging yourself to the gym 5 times a week and absolutely hating every minute may be “healthy” but probably isn’t refueling you. Pick something that you enjoy.

•    Self-care can be activities that involve other people; going out for coffee with friends, hanging out with your partner, having a tickle fight with your kids. However, notice when being around other people is actually draining. Most of us need alone time. Honour your needs or spending time with others will feel less like self-care, and more like an obligation.

•    Self-care can be activities that engage our minds; reading, writing, art projects. Again though (are you noticing a trend here?), it actually needs to be something that you enjoy. Just because colouring is all the rage, that doesn't mean it's the right fit for you. Find something that works for you. If you need to read the equivalent of candy floss for the brain, go for it!

Regardless of your definition of self-care, the most important part is that you're doing it on a regular and consistent basis!